Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World (28 page)

But in Maasai culture, there are all sorts of safeguards for the burgeoning individual warrior-soul, all sorts of
piko
-pumping gifts bestowed. Every child is given a guardian spirit at birth. Babies are also given a signature sound in addition to their names, a vibration that transcends language like the strange sing-song beauty of a hyena call, the winsome moo of a cow. It is a sound used as a form of announcement, to be used when approaching villages in the dark. Cattle are, conversely, given human names, and they are grouped into families. Often, it is by calling their names that the herder confirms everyone has made it home.

Antony says, “When I go back to my family, I do ceremonies. I do singing. I keep the tradition. I keep it well. But I will not follow in the tradition of marrying more than one wife.” His father has six wives. He has none, and he only wants one. It’s not so much cultural factors that have made up his mind; it’s what nature is dictating.

“Life is changing,” he says. “It’s complicated and expensive. Even if you have one hundred cattle, there’s no room to graze. The rains are not dependable. Land is small now because of human settlement. If you can’t have one hundred cattle, you can’t have three wives.” He will take what feels right in his tradition—what works in the context of his life and environment—and he will leave the rest. Of other traditions—including those of the missionaries who ran his school—he will do the same.

Another camp employee walks by and gives Antony a small wave. I know from earlier conversations that he is also Maasai. He ended up working for &Beyond after he came by the mobile camp to make good on a drought-induced loan delivered in the form of goat. When Antony raises his arm, I can see that he’s wearing a Maasai-beaded belt, a tourist-driven supplement to a cattle-based economy.

Antony turns to me and says, “Nature is giving me the offer to live in the bush like this, and I am taking it. Nature is still supporting my life. I am doing this job to survive. That is why I am here.”

He braids his stout fingers together and rests his elbows on his knees, leaning into the fire. “Sometimes, things come to you. You wonder: How did this happen? Who brought this to me?” he says. “It was Nature. It is always Nature!”

I laugh. “I’m here because I’m writing a book about
natural
phenomena.”

“See,” he says, knowingly. “Nature gave you that.”

In Antony’s village, life-sustaining blessings are often credited, by name, to Engai Narok, or Black God. He says, “Black God is not a person, not a tree.” Engai, he tells me, is the force of life itself. Black God is said to live in a hiding place—no one knows exactly where—which, of course, means that Black God potentially lives everywhere.

“Maasai believe that, if you need rain, burning something in sacrifice will remind Black God to bring it. I have seen this ceremony,” Antony says, shaking his head in disbelief. “Two days later, I swear, it always rains!”

Around us, lanterns come to life like giant fireflies. Guests are gathering beyond our chairs. We’ll soon be swept into the crowd as dinner commences. Antony walks me over to a huge collective table set up under a thorn acacia.

“I do not really know much about Black God,” he says. “But I do know this: When I see the rains coming,
that
is Nature.”

 • • • 

The hippopotamus is widely considered one of most dangerous animals in Africa. And the staff of &Beyond’s Grumeti River Camp—where I’ve arrived for the remainder of my stay in Tanzania—tells me that there’s one that loves to stand in front of my tent. “You must be careful when the hippo comes out of the water,” a camp manager advises. “It will take down anything in its path.”

When I express concern about this quirk of my accommodation, known as tent number seven—or, as a fellow guest referred to it,
the one sort of out there by itself
—the manager says, “It’s okay. The hippo has not harmed a guest yet.”
Yet!

As if this isn’t enough, there are also vervet monkeys to worry about. They come begging for food, habituated by guests who bribe them so they can snap photos. “You have to keep your eyes open,” he says. “You have to make sure the monkeys know you mean business. Otherwise, they are going to steal your bread.”

At this mention of monkey business, I laugh. He doesn’t. I do not like this.

I arranged to come to Grumeti months ago, when I thought the migration might have already traveled this far north. It’s a gamble that hasn’t paid off in a traditional sense. Animal movements now indicate that it will be weeks before wildebeest reach this place. I will not see large herds here, pushing their way across the Grumeti River, but I might find a few trailblazing zebra.

The camp likes to mix things up with dinner in various locations, and, this afternoon, they’ve erected a makeshift bar in a field of short grass. It’s flanked by two park rangers with AK-47s.

“What are they doing here?” I ask my assigned guide, Humphrey, a bubbly man with a wide smile and painfully crooked teeth.

“They follow us around. To make sure nothing happens. There are poachers.”

We’re interrupted by someone in the distance: “Where’s Leigh Ann? I hear her voice.” Even though I have a pretty characteristic voice—one that inspires telemarketers to ask for my mom—this recognition is surprising.

As it turns out, the tourists who rode with me into Arusha from the airport have made their way to Grumeti. The whole group appears more relaxed now, especially the lawyer among them, Fred, who—during our initial meeting outside of Kilimanjaro airport—was seriously miffed about his lost luggage. He’s clad in a mismatch of clothing from the variety of lodges he’s stayed at since we last saw each other. Despite the tastefulness of the logos, the hodgepodge makes him look like a khaki-clad, safari-going version of a sponsored NASCAR driver.

Fred’s wife greets me and nods toward guards. “Wonder what they’re here for.”

“Poachers,” I say.

“They think we’re poachers?”

“No, they’re here to protect us from poachers.”

Her face softens. Into a smile. “You’re kidding, right?” she says.

“No, I’m serious.”

At this, she begins to break down. Into laughter.

“For a minute,” she says, waving me off, “I almost bought into your bullshit!”

I decide it best not to push the issue.

The woman, finally done laughing at my perceived tease, points toward Fred, gold bracelets jingling. “I think he’s actually having fun. You know, he didn’t even want to come!”

Fred notices that she’s looking at him, so he wanders over. It’s true. “This has become one of the top experiences of my life,” he says, “and I didn’t want to be here because it was inconvenient! I didn’t want to get the shots. Didn’t want to take malaria pills. I was nervous about doing something different. I can’t believe I almost missed this! There’s no way to explain what it’s like being here. It’s like being back in your birthplace! Unless you’re here, you can’t get it!”

Fred absentmindedly adjusts his sun hat. “Here, I’m an observer,” he says. “At home, I’m an actor. I try to control my environment, but here, I have no control. I have no control over an elephant or a lion. Nature is what’s important!”

He takes a sip of the Kilimanjaro-brand beer he’s toting in his left hand. He is in his fifties, but he has taken on the relaxed air of a college kid at a lawn party, albeit a lawn party with AK-47s. He opens his arms to the savanna and says, “The magic is back. This is my world! I’m no longer a lawyer. There is so much more to it all than that!”

He is uttering, nearly down to the phrase, what eclipse-chasing James—whom I’m now planning to rendezvous with in Australia—has seen happening to people during cosmic phenomena. I do believe Fred is having a mystical experience. “Think you’ll be able to keep this magic with you when you go home?” I ask, imagining wildebeest calls replaced by the honk-honk of L.A. traffic.

His back slumps a little as he holds out his arms. “When I go home, it will be like a dream. It will seem like I dreamt all of this. But, I am here. I am living it! We’re part of this place!”

The rest of his group seems unmoved by their time here, but I feel it, too. It’s an inexplicably high comfort level in a place that seems like it should be the most nervous-making landscape on earth. And, of course, it does have its high-drama moments. But the sense of belonging is overwhelming. This is Eden. And—despite ecological decline—it has not fallen.
Yet.

We’ve got the whole world in our hands.

A few rangers ramble over to join the small cluster of guests. “Tell us a story of your most dangerous encounter with an animal,” someone prods them.

One ranger tells the story of a hippo that charged him from behind a bush one morning as he was on his way to the office. “Luckily,” he says, “I had a cell phone.” He didn’t use it to call for help—of course not, what good would that have done out here? No, he popped that hippo in the face with it and took off.

“What about you?” Fred asks a quiet ranger that’s standing beyond the circle. “What animal do you fear the most?”

The ranger looks Fred in the eye. He does not blink.

“Humans,” he says.

 • • • 

Outside our vehicle, the landscape moves as if we’re on a carousel. Humphrey is a much slower driver than David. But still, it’s hard to read what’s out there. I see a wildebeest that turns out to be a termite mound. When I apologize for the false sighting, Humphrey says, “I call those ALTs. Animal-Looking Things. But, if you don’t look, you don’t know what you’ve got! You could think it’s an anthill and it could turn out to be a cheetah.”

It’s just that kind of place.

In the distance, a gazelle leaps over lion-colored grass, high enough for me to see the bottom of its hooves. “He’s showing us that we cannot catch him,” Humphrey says, laughing so hard that he throws his head back. “He is flirting with us!” Humphrey’s cackle softens to a giggle. “I am the Bogart of the bush!” he says. “I show the romance of the animals!”

Only recently did Humphrey learn from an American guest that there’s an old movie star who shares his name. He slaps the steering wheel playfully, giving his characteristic near-wildebeest, honk-like laugh. “Seriously,” he says, “I don’t know why my parents chose this English name. But what I like about it is how people say it in Swahili. If you tell anyone in Swahili my name, they will always say: Amfree. I Amfree! And I am free because I meet people and we get to share days! It’s not like I’m in an office. I am free! I can go anywhere I want and look for things. I can move! There’s no stress—not that kind of stress when you are confined. I am never bored. To me, that’s what freedom means.”

When we stop to check out a pride of lions, all females, I ask Humphrey if there are age limits for safaris. He nods toward a lioness who appears to be lovingly nudging her cub. “When female lions hear children cry in the vehicle, they might think you’ve taken their cub,” Humphrey tells me. “They will attack if they think that.”

Enough said. Even though I’m still homesick—even though, yesterday, a fellow guest made my face burn when she said to her husband: “Can you believe her son is with her husband, alone, for over a week?”—I’m glad my little critter is in the clear.

Humphrey has a young son, too, a newborn he dreams of bringing into the bush someday. He says, “I’m working for my son to go to school, to have good opportunities, but sometimes I feel very sad to be away from him. But this is a chance to find what is good in life so you can tell him about it. Maybe someday you will bring your son back here. People who don’t understand what you’re doing here might think you’re a bad mother, but they don’t know what your plans are for your son.”

Humphrey has told me that his favorite animal is the honeyguide, a bird known to lead bushmen to honey. The wild birds fly along—watching and waiting for humans as a family dog might—and, when they get to a store of honey, they do a special dance to let their human partner know where the sweets are. The bushmen then break through honeycomb that the bird is not strong enough to access on its own, and together, they share the spoils.

“Maybe we’re like the honeyguides,” I tell him. “We go out so that we can show our children where the sweetest things can be found!”

Humphrey seems thrilled by this. “Yes! I like the good life. A good life means good stories. Stories are important for anyone to be fulfilled. When you fulfill your own goals you have to be happy. When you’re happy, when you are experiencing, it’s good for the family. You are becoming strong. Like a warrior!”

I’m sort of reveling in this continually surfacing notion that I could be considered a warrior not in spite of my role as a mother but because of it, when I notice a notebook on the dashboard. It’s covered in magazine photos and the mismatched letters of a ransom note. It reads: “Sixth Sense.”

Humphrey notices me looking at the collage-covered notebook, the size of a back pocket. “I did that during my training,” he says. “They told us we could make the book look nice.”

“Why Sixth Sense?” I ask.

“Because I think most animals have more than human senses. Animals have a sixth sense, though they might not know about it. They respect each other. They know their responsibilities. They don’t fight for no reason like some humans do. They care for each other. They know what’s supposed to be done. Imagine if we could live like animals—not caring about how many things we have. They only take what they need. Nothing more. To us, it looks like the animals are lacking some things. But they have their own ways.”

There is a herd of elephants in the distance. We watch for a few minutes as they ramble across grassland. “They look healthy,” Humphrey says, relieved. Yesterday, an &Beyond ranger came across one that had been wounded, in the foot, by a poacher’s bullet, creating a general atmosphere of sadness and unease among staff and guests alike. Tensions have grown around the park over the years, with wealthy international tourists and operators and conservation groups demanding precious land, cutting down areas locals depend on for farming and grazing. The human communities around the park are not often included as part of the Serengeti ecosystem. Ivan’s scales are not balancing out.